Celebrity Charity Kickabout

Am I the only one who yawns at the very thought of another charity football match? Usually a bunch of unaligned and has-been footballers maybe including the odd English 1966er take on maybe a gang of pseudo-celebrities and reality-tv contestants who otherwise don't know where their next photo-op is coming from.

Then we the viewing public have to miss 4 or 5 repeats (sorry, "Classic" episodes) of The Simpsons while $KY One televises the farcical kickabout, bringing the sport of soccer into disrepute with their hand-shaking, hugging and general good humour between opposing team-mates.

"Oooh it's such an honour to lock horns with Geoff Hurst", says Peter Andre (for those of you who don't know who Peter Andre is, he was on "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here") or Alex from Big Brother.

But you have to watch it, don't you? I mean just like you had to buy "Band Aid 2000". (Though I was delighted to learn of people buying that and leaving the copies in the shop!) Because it's for a good cause.

CHARITY IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR CRAP!

There's just no effort put into because they know everyone will just want to support the charity. I mean there's no sign of Thierry Henry curling one into the top-corner or Ruud Van Nistleroy sliding from nowhere for a last-minute injury-time winner and the crowd erupting. There's no risks taken, after all, no one wants to risk injuring themselves or tiring themselves in a *charity* match... after all there's the real league to consider.

Charity matches have to start demanding a reward for winning and punishment for losing. For example, make real league or cup matches charity matches. This way people could both feel like they are contributing to a good cause *and* enjoy the game. Or perhaps there is a competitive match between two countries who previously met in a world cup final (e.g. England & Germany - the English seem to really love this one for some reason - one English (BBC maybe?) survey showed it as one of the top 5 world-changing moments! Though I doubt this is such a big deal to the Germans... they have 3 other World Cup wins... ) have surviving retired players *from* that final - i.e. each team agrees to have the same number of veterans play.

If you really want to involve non-footballing b-list celebrities... How about this... Make an agreement with all the tabloid newspapers. The winning team gets favourable articles in the front pages for the following week. The losing team have their coke habits revealed.
Or what about the English Big Brother contestants versus the French ones (I think France has Frere Grand anyway)... The losing side are not allowed to put on Big Brother the following year, and the winning side not only get to put it on, but it has to be shown on telly in the losing country as well!

(Sorry to keep going on about English stuff, but we don't really get this kind of stuff in Ireland)